


One and another and a hundred and more

by Mariyekos



Series: A descent into new, old existence [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Canon, Ambiguous Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Byleth does talk to a few people but they are not prominent enough to warrant tags, Gen, Manakete!Byleth, Mentions of Seteth Flayn and Rhea, Missing Scene, Nabatean!Byleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:36:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25432474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mariyekos/pseuds/Mariyekos
Summary: "It started out small, at first. Little changes that Byleth noticed but didn’t really take note of, recognizing and immediately forgetting when he decided they were of no concern. Strange but not overly-alarming developments that, for some reason, he never connected when they first arose.Of course, things couldn’t stay small forever. They couldn’t and wouldn’t be forgotten once time had passed and they reached a point that he could no longer ignore them. A point where he realized all the little things were part of one connected whole. Little signs that said that, despite who his father was, he wasn’t really human."Or, an exploration of the changes Byleth notices in himself after reaching the monastery as his body slowly turns into that of a Nabatean.
Series: A descent into new, old existence [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842106
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	One and another and a hundred and more

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! The fic I've thought about writing for months but never wrote down until last night when I decided why not sacrifice sleep on a work night to get down 6,000 words of self-indulgence in one 3.5 hour session (...plus 30-minute break. I'm not perfect). If your first thought is, 'wait, this isn't 6,000 words' you are right. It's not. Because, as it says up top, this is part of a series. I debated whether I should have this be multi-chaptered or a series, but after thinking about the differences in writing style between what's posted here and the following 4,000 words I have written as of now, I decided a series was for the best. 
> 
> This fic follows Byleth from shortly after he reaches the monastery to immediately before the timeskip. The next fic in the series will follow what happens after. Also it took me until I had filled out everything but the tags to remember that in this game the manaketes are called Nabateans. Hence why I have both.

It started out small, at first. Little changes that Byleth _noticed_ but didn’t really _take note of,_ recognizing and immediately forgetting when he decided they were of no concern. Strange but not overly-alarming developments that, for some reason, he never connected when they first arose.

Of course, things couldn’t stay small forever. They couldn’t and wouldn’t be forgotten once time had passed and they reached a point that he could no longer ignore them. A point where he realized all the little things were part of one connected whole. The signs that said that, despite who his father was, he wasn’t really human.

* * *

Byleth had always liked to keep his nails long. Not overly long, not anything the passing stranger would stop and stare at. But the ends of his nails extended just beyond the edge of his fingertips, white and flat and in his opinion, nice to look at. Despite his general lack of care for his appearance, he was meticulous when it came to keeping his nails at his desired length and shape. It was an aesthetic thing. He thought they looked good wrapped around the hilt of the iron sword he kept buckled to his hip at all times, save those he decided to wield it, so he kept them in top shape. He didn’t usually do anything fancy to his hair, so he had to show at least some sort of personal grooming habits to keep his father off his back.

(And oh wasn’t the sight of his hand on a hilt a frequent and important one. His father’s mercenaries had made more than a few comments about his obsession with his sword and how strange it was for him to sleep with a blade at his side, warning him he might cut himself one day. Having the blade made him feel safe though, and according to the mercenaries and his father alike he slept like the dead, not moving the slightest bit aside from the slow rise and fall of his chest. It wasn’t as though he was going to roll over and pierce himself on the sword while dreaming, so he found no problem with the move. Most people in the inns and taverns they visited were used to armed travelers as well, so he saw no need to remove the blade from his side while eating or drinking with the others even if they chose to do so. He wasn’t a threat. Anyone worried about it could ask him to put it away and, as long as they were reasonable, he’d do so right away.)

Shortly after he first got to Garreg Mach, his nail routine began to become somewhat of a problem. For some strange reason, it became slowly but significantly more difficult to keep them as he liked.

The first thing he noticed was that his nail file tended to need to be ground back to a proper filing texture more often than he was used to. He’d always gone through them more quickly than his companions, but the time in between repair sessions was growing shorter. It was a little frustrating, but not overly annoying. Not something of real note.

The next thing he noticed was that he was that he was having to apply more and more pressure to his nails to file them correctly. It wasn’t as though he was having to go hard enough he thought he might accidentally snap the file. Not at first, anyway. But the act of filing down his nails with even the sharpest file became more difficult as the days went on, the nails themselves growing thicker and harder until Byleth noticed he was having a harder time slipping them under some of the thin compartments in one of his personal chests because they were simply too thick to fit in anymore. When he slammed his fingers in a door that probably should have snapped a nail clean off, he saw the nails were perfectly fine. Not even a scratch.

He figured it had something to do with his change in diet. He was eating a lot more Queen Loach and Teutates Pike than he used to. He had grown up eating Airmid Goby and Albinean Herring as his fish of choice, but his students had slightly more refined tastes and he tried to share at least one or two meals with them a day to build lasting bonds, changing the makeup of his meals significantly. 

Maybe there was something about the higher quality fish that led to his...what were nails made of? Bone? No. Kera-something? Whatever it was, maybe those high class fish made it stronger or something. A lot of nobles were very concerned with maintaining a good appearance in as many aspects as they could control. He could see them breeding and eating certain types of fish just to make themselves look better. He  _ had _ noticed that the people who ate a lot of Bullhead had pretty silky hair, for one.

So when the nail thing came up, he figured it was a diet thing. A lifestyle change. An annoying one, to be sure. He’d never had to fix up his nail file so often (and buy new ones, when his file was so filed down he couldn’t fix it anymore), but he could still shape the nails how he wanted them. 

Plus, they made a satisfying sound when he tapped them on things. A sharp rap that got his students’ attention whenever they got too distracted and stopped paying attention to him. Which didn’t happen that often, admittedly, but it happened often enough that he appreciated his new tool.

He noticed Flayn’s eyes linger on them one day when he handed an assignment back to her, following his hands even as he pulled away. 

“Like them?” he asked, flipping his right hand over as he glanced at his nails. They’d been growing faster lately, but seemed content to stop growing at about a centimeter and a half away from his fingertips - longer than he normally kept them, but not too much of a bother as to make him feel an urge to file them back down. He’d taken to filing them into wide points rather than a flat edge as he was used to, simply because that was also easier. The center was the hardest, the edges less so, and the center grew the fastest of all. It was the most convenient style to keep up.

(Not to mention kind of cool looking and potentially useful. He kept his dagger on him at all times (even the rare ones he parted from his dear sword, the old iron now put aside in favor of the mysterious Sword of the Creator), but he thought they might be useful for cutting someone in a pinch. He could probably draw blood if he really tried. They were hard enough that he’d cut through more than a few firm things lately, some on purpose, some not so much.)

Flayn blinked a few times before putting on a bright, red-cheeked smile. Embarrassed to be caught in the act, though Byleth saw nothing wrong with her taking note of the one part of his physical appearance that he could even be suggested to obsess over.

“Oh, I just noticed you seem to take good care of them, professor!” Flayn responded, laughing in a very forced way. “They remind me of mine, a little.” She showed him her hands. The nails had been filed back to a long, but decidedly more normal and less obviously pointed level. They were the thickest he’d ever seen on a person. “It can be such a bother trying to slip them under things to open them, can it not? Sometimes I wish my nails were just the slightest bit thinner, so that I might more subtly pop open some of the jars my brother stores his secret sweets in without having to find a knife or other tool to do so.”

Byleth nodded absentmindedly. Seteth had a stash of secret sweets? He’d have to get in on that one day. From the meals they’d shared, he’d come to realize his tastes and Seteth’s aligned quite nicely.

Then he looked back to Flayn, offering up a suggestion that had come to mind a few times for his own sake. “Have you ever thought about how good your nails could be for catching fish?”

Flayn's eyes widened. A revelation.

Byleth continued. “Yours might not be quite pointy enough, but if you grew them out just a little bit longer, you could probably fillet a fish without even needing a knife. As it is you could get a good grip on one of the slippery suckers with those things.”

Flayn raised her hands to her face, mouth wide. “I have never thought of that professor. I have not caught and prepared a fish by hand since I was in my other-…” She looked him in the eye, determination clear on her face. “I have caught many a fish with these hands, but I have always felt the need to find a proper utensil to prepare the fish. No more! I have all the tools I need, right here with me. Or I will soon. Thank you for your priceless aid, professor. I cannot wait to visit the pond!” She then bowed, running out of the classroom.

“Wait,” Byleth called back, not trying very hard to catch her attention. “Afternoon classes start up again in about five minutes…” He sighed.

Eh. It didn’t matter that much. Flayn was younger than the other students, so he could let her excitement and eventual tardiness slide.

...Although, was she? She looked young, but he had absolutely no idea how old she was. 13? 14? She couldn’t be any younger, or there was no way Seteth would have let her join his class. Rhea maybe. She apparently had no standards when it came to hiring people to teach the students, so why would she have any standards when it came to a single student in the class of someone who was wildly incompetent when it came to teaching dozens of nobles and commoners alike who’d probably come expecting a much higher education?

He looked back to his nails, clicking them a few times. The sound was satisfying. Usually they were hidden by his gloves, so it wasn’t as though their length was a big problem. Until he ripped through a pair, like he had earlier that morning, hence his current lack of gloves and why Flayn had only just now noticed the state of his nails, which had been about as thick and long as they were since a week or two after the mess that led to his getting the Sword of the Creator.

His nails looked even cooler wrapped around that. A sword made of bone? Or a sword of whatever material it was that looked like bone? Impressive. With sharp nails around it? Even moreso. Intimidating, even.

And so, that was where it all began. 

* * *

The next thing he noticed was that things started looking...odd. 

He wasn’t sure how to describe it. Just. Odd. Like the colors were all slightly off, like the clarity of the world had suddenly been turned up just the slightest bit.

He first noticed it when getting dressed one day, something about his coat (a custom piece, something of a mix between a traditional cape and a gardcorps) not seeming quite right. His clothes had always been black, pink, and grey only. The blue of his dagger scabbard was the only thing that deviated from that color pattern, a pop of color he accepted as a gift from his father for his 10th birthday. But though each fabric was slightly different, every piece was one shade throughout its respective color. A true black for his coat. A peach pink for the details on his tunic. A whatever-it-was grey for the tunic itself, a cobalt for the dagger.

But looking at his coat now, it was definitely not all true-black. Some threads seemed to shine a… he didn’t even have a name for whatever color that was. It made him think of something between a pink and green, almost. But that wasn’t quite right, and whatever the color was made his head spin. It was still fairly dark, almost hidden within the strands that were still black like they were supposed to be. But some of the strands  _ weren’t  _ black, and that was not right. Some were a blue-purple, too. Some a shimmering silver. It gave him a headache to stare at for too long.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t normal.

So he put on the rest of his outfit and bunched the coat up in his arms, marching it toward Richard, the member of the mercenaries who’d offered to do his laundry the night before. Whatever Richard had done to it, he’d messed it up, and Byleth was not happy. How was he supposed to go about his day if simply looking at his own clothing distracted him?

However, Richard completely denied any wrongdoing when confronted. 

“I washed it the same as I always have!” he told Byleth, waving his hands in front of his face as he backed away with each step Byleth took. “Promise!”

“Did you use water someone else had used before you? Perhaps they put something in it.”

“No, I didn’t. I used fresh water, my special homemade wash mix, and nothing else. I did everything I do any time I wash clothes, and that was it. I didn’t mess with your coat. Really, By!”

Byleth held the coat back up, looking it over. The strange new colors seemed even more intense in the sunlight. Except...he blinked a few times, and the colors were gone. The coat was back to the true-black it had always been.

Richard blinked a few times too. “Uh, if you don’t mind asking, what do you think I did to mess your coat up? I don’t see any rips or stains.”

Byleth turned it around a few times. Looked at it carefully. Held it up to the sun.

It was still normal. The strange colors were gone.

“You good there, buddy?” Richard asked, the concern clear in his voice. “I know you’ve never been real great at talking, but you can tell me whatever’s bugging you. I won’t get mad. I know Jeralt’s got you all figured out just by the way you breathe or something, but I’m nowhere near that good. You’re gonna have to give me some cues here.”

Ah, yeah. That. 

Byleth rubbed his eyes, then looked back at the coat. For a split second he thought he saw the colors again, but the sight faded before he could fully process it.

“Nevermind,” Byleth said, turning around to go back to his room for his fishing rod. 

It was a custom piece his dad had made for him, so he liked using it even though the guy at the pond was always willing to lend a rod out free of cost. Something about the rod Jeralt had made was just better. It caught more fish or something. Or he caught more fish when using it. It might have just been because he was used to it, or because he was sentimental and calmer with that in his hands, or some other little thing that was all in his head. Regardless, it made enough of a difference that he didn’t want to get rid of the thing. The walk to his room wasn’t that long anyway. Walking was a good way to maintain his health.

He heard Richard calling out to him as he returned to his room but paid the man no mind. Richard would get over it. He always had, back when Byleth had been too young and too distant to even consider his actions might have made people upset, not even knowing what ‘upset’ really was.

Byleth, on the other hand, did not get over whatever it was that was messing with his vision.

Sometimes, out of the blue, colors would suddenly fracture into more shades than he felt he’d ever seen before. What was once a pine green suddenly became at least seven shades of who-knows-what. The red glow of the Sword of the Creator was transformed into a mesmerizing gradient of warm light, a personal sunset when he set his hand upon the sword’s hilt. The scales of his favorite fish became so brilliant and iridescent with a rainbow appearing before him at each point the sun hit that he had to dramatically decrease his fishing time because staring at the scales and their strange colors for too long gave him a headache. 

The colors bothered him less over time as he got more used to them, but he never fully adjusted to the new look of the world. It was different. Beautiful, in its own way, but different.

In the black void he was thrust into after his encounter with Solon, after his failure to destroy the girl that had murdered his father, the singular light source glittered with a thousand golds he’d never before seen. And when Sothis burst into a breathtaking light, into sparkling, enveloping, comforting streams of energy that illuminated the void and filled his body…

The world never returned to normal after that. Colors stayed bright. The night wasn’t so hard to fight in any more, especially not when things moved. The not-so true-black coat he wore was put to rest, a new one commissioned with a real true-black fabric he’d specifically picked out and given to the tailor so that on the one-month anniversary of his father’s funeral he could mourn fully, absent of any colors old or new that might imply he felt anything than utter despair (and fury at those who had killed his father, two emotions so powerful and so beyond anything he’d ever imagined he might feel a year prior, threatening to overwhelm him with neither his father nor Sothis present to guide him through them).

The new colors became a part of his everyday life. It disappointed him a little bit, realizing some of the fashion-forward students like Hilda actually wore accessories with sub-colors that clashed horribly with each other. But it seemed no one but him could tell, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. 

No one except him and the three other green-haired, green-eyed residents of the Monastery. Rhea, Seteth, and Flayn always wore true-color garments. Their standard outfits were true-color, being one blue where they were supposed to be one blue, one gold where they were supposed to be one gold, and so on. The students’ uniforms that had been supplied by the academy were the same.

But while the students’ non-uniform clothing were full of mixed colors and shades, Byleth never saw such a thing on those three particular members of the church. The breeches and surcoat Seteth tended to wear when training the wyverns the monastery kept were true-brown and true-white, respectively. Or rather, true the-brown-of-young-pine’s-inner-bark, and true the-white-of-pearls-from-Derdriu. 

(Byleth didn’t have names for those specific colors. He’d found he was now seeing far more colors than he had traditional names for like crimson or carmine or scarlet or vermillion or maroon or whatever for. So he just assigned certain colors to certain things that came to mind when he saw them. Some names were longer than others, some shorter. How did you assign a name to a color that was so unique it didn’t even resemble those of the rainbow?)

He didn’t think he’d ever seen Rhea out of her official uniform, actually. But he’d seen Flayn in a few casual dresses, all of which shared the true-color-only color scheme Seteth stuck to.

At first he wrote it off as coincidence. But then he began to notice the fabrics in Seteth’s office, the colors Flayn tended to use when she submitted diagrams in her homework. The flowers Rhea preferred, the pieces of cloth she gifted to trusted companions. Even the finest tailors had not seemed to notice the difference between the new true-colors and the old true-colors. 

No, it wasn’t coincidence. Rhea, Seteth, and Flayn saw colors as he did too.

But why?

He couldn’t figure it out. He should have been able to, really. He’d already realized their shared hair and eye color. But for whatever reason it took him far too long to piece everything together. So for a long while, the colors remained simply another strange thing he noticed about himself, not a sign that something was wrong or something was changing or anything of the sort. An inconvenience. Nothing more.

* * *

Sothis’ disappearance, or their merging, or whatever it should be called, was what started the true changes. The significant, stacked ones. Nails and eyesight weren’t that big. His gloves kept very few people from noticing the former, and the latter he never mentioned and no one ever asked about. 

They were small things, all things considered.

But there was a phrase. Something about the straw that broke the pegasus’ back? The wyvern’s back? That probably wasn’t right. He wasn’t good at phrases like that. But whatever the saying was that meant that the little things do add up, and that they would eventually overwhelm whichever person or animal or whatever it was that they were forced upon. 

He wasn’t overwhelmed. Not before the Fall. But he was slowly unnerved, though he never let it show.

Sometimes, he knew things.

Not in the, ‘oh, I’ve read this somewhere’ way. Not in the ‘oh, I can make a good guess about that’ way. In the ‘I can think of no way in which I would have obtained this information and yet somehow, I have it’ way.

Most of it came down to history. Sometimes Flayn would talk to him about old battles they had studied in class, messing up some of the details the textbooks had described. She’d talk about how a certain person had turned the tides of battle with a certain type of magic, when the books all said that that person had been a swordsman who’d perished in the battle before. But sometimes Byleth’s mind seemed to go into a slight haze, and he’d agree with her and talk about how he thought it odd that that person had turned to dark magic when they’d always been known for their strong Seraphims, to which Flayn would go on about how surprising their sudden Miasma had been to those on the battlefield. Like she knew exactly what Byleth was talking about, even though  _ Byleth _ didn’t know what he was talking about. He just...knew what had happened. It wasn’t written in any textbook. Any history book. He only ever managed to track down one legend about it. And yet, he was able to have a coherent conversation with Flayn about it.

He knew, even without having any way to know. He knew.

His class would be sent on a mission to defeat some demonic beasts who had appeared a few days before and were wreaking havoc around the countryside, eventually coming to a fork in the road with fresh tracks on both sides, and he’d always choose the right fork to follow. 

He’d been trained in tracking when he was younger, so he’d always been good at finding bandits or game, even if the demonic beast presence was more recent. But he’d always taken a little while to look at the tracks, to think over the situation, to consider the more likely path and why. 

After Sothis? He just knew. They arrived at the fork in the road and there were what normally appeared to be fresher tracks on the right side of the road, but he knew their targets lie down the left path. And they did. He knew.

His arrows struck true far more often than they ever had. Not just in the chest. In through the middle of the heart, angled up through an artery. Not just in the head. In through the eye, up through the brain. 

His sword arm wasn’t any stronger, but his movements grew more and more precise. When he wanted to hit a very small spot, he hit it exactly. Usually he aimed for the armpit and got a good swipe at the chest. Now he aimed for the armpit and his opponent was down an arm. Not down a forearm. Not down an arm and a good chunk of the chest. Down an arm, cut right at the armpit.

The world wasn’t slower, exactly, but he had a better grip on it. He could track movements better, he could aim better, he could control himself to a degree he’d always dreamed of but had long since admitted was impossible.

Well. Not so impossible anymore.

The little things stacked. Little by little by little until war came and he fought and Rhea transformed into a beast unlike any he’d ever seen, a creature from myths and old murals that destroyed anything and everything in her path, and he tried to help her when she was almost overwhelmed only for the ground to crumble underneath him and make him

Fall

down

down 

Down

(And oh, how good the wind felt as it rushed past him, and how right the thought of ‘I should spread my wings and fly out of here’ felt when it came to him. It wasn’t until much, much later that he remembered said thought and realized how wrong it should have been. But by then, he understood why it had been right.)

**Author's Note:**

> Most of what I wanted to say I already said in the opening notes. The next fic will have more dialogue, and so far is in longer segments than this one. It will also be in what will probably be an ambiguous, but non-CF route. If it's not ambiguous, it will likely be Silver Snow or Azure Moon. I've written until just before Byleth reaches the monastery, and am still deciding which I want to do. Probably ambiguous if I can make it that way. Maybe as part of a 3-part series if I dive off into not just "Byleth is turning into a manakete, this could have happened off-screen in canon" but also "now that Byleth is visibly less human TWSITD are interested in him and they try to get a closer look... " territory. And unlike many of my fics where I think "eh maybe I'll make this into a series one day" this one is definitely getting at least a sequel with the more canon post-timeskip stuff.
> 
> Oh! I also have several tabs open relating to fun things like "can reptiles see color" (some have more cones than humans, hence more color), "can reptiles see at night" (some are better with moving objects), and the names of various medieval garments. There were more, but I closed most of them yesterday. So Nabatean characteristics are a mix of those reptiles have and some fun stuff I just wanted to include. Canon didn't elaborate so. My land now!
> 
> Thank you for reading, and all comments and kudos are appreciated!
> 
> Until next time,  
> Mariyekos


End file.
